sign in sign up
<<
Home , Bodhidharma, Koan, Zazen

and Peace of Mind Teisho by Rafe Martin, Endless Path , October 2020

“Bodhidharma and Peace of Mind” is case no. 41 of the training text, Wu-men kuan, (Mumonkan), Gateless Barrier. Created by the unusual Chinese Zen , Wu-men, in the early 12th century, the book, comprised of 48 cases along with Wu-men’s illuminating commentaries and verses, draws on the sayings and doings of earlier 8th & 9th century T’ang era Zen masters, all to help students explore and actualize genuine practice-realization.

Case 41: Bodhidharma sat facing the wall. The Second Ancestor1, having cut off his arm, stood there in the snow. He said, “Your disciple’s mind has no peace as yet. I beg you, master, to please put it to rest.”

Bodhidharma said, “Bring me your mind, and I will put it to rest.”

The Second Ancestor said, “I have searched for my mind, but I cannot find it.”

Bodhidharma said, “Then I have completely put it to rest for you.”

Wu-men’s Commentary

The broken-toothed old foreigner proudly came over a hundred thousand miles across the sea. This was like raising waves where there is no wind. Bodhidharma could enlighten only one disciple, and even he was a cripple. Well, well! Hsien-san-lang does not know four words.

Wu-men’s Verse

Coming from the West and directly pointing— This great affair was caused by the transmission. The troublemakers who created the stir in Zen circles Are, after all, these two! ___

1. Hui-k’o (Chinese)(Japanese – Eka) The folkloric figure who was a superb fisherman who was illiterate. Wu-men is calling our attention to the failure of words and abstractions. Zen tradition holds that 1500 years ago a somewhat mythic Buddhist teacher named Bodhidharma, an ex-Indian prince, at an advanced age came over the seas to from Southern where, directly pointing to Mind without dependence on special words and letters or approved “holy” texts, opened the gateless gate of Zen. Bodhidharma’s Four Principles were summed up as:

A special transmission outside ; No dependence on words and phrases; Directly pointing to the human mind; Seeing into one’s nature and attaining .

With this four point presentation, Bodhidharma opened up his shop and set out his wares. The Zen teaching he presented differed from that of other schools of Buddhist practice. Rather than adding good things like wisdom and compassion to ourselves, Bodhidharma’s teaching took everything away so that we might recognize that the Mind we seek we already have, and that this Original, untainted Mind right now sees, hears, thinks, eats, digests, gets tired and, sleeps. All we have to do is awake to what is already ours. As the Beatles sang, “Baby you're the rich man,” and, “Now that you know who you are, what are you going to do.” How will you use it? This became a sort of byword in Chinese Zen – “You already have it, so how will you use it?” Once two teachers checked themselves on this while looking up at the moon. One said, “Everyone has it, but they do not use it.” The other said, “How true. Won’t you please use it?” The other said, “How would you use it?” The questioner then seized his friend by the collar of his robe, threw him to the ground, and trampled him. The other got up, dusted himself off, and said, “What a tiger you are!” Or, as the Buddhist parable of Enyadatta and her head puts it so succinctly, Enyadatta has never been without her head. Only because she doesn't know it, she becomes crazed thinking her head is missing, and has no peace. How astonished she is when she discovers that her missing head is actually where it’s always been, right on her shoulders! And yet how much work remains before that crazed state of thinking her head is missing is gone, and she can settle into a truly ordinary, that is, unself-conscious life.

Just having Bodhidharma’s words isn't enough. The treasure map he presents with his four principles is where we begin. Faith in Zen means action, not dogma. We must find the jewel that the Lotus says is already sewn into the lining of our clothes. It won't do to simply believe and think we’re rich without actual money in the bank. There is knowing —“that’s a maple, that’s an oak, that’s a Subaru, that’s a Chevy,” and there is knowing the way we personally know if water is hot or cold. The great Chao-chou, when asked by a monk, “What is the meaning of Bodhidharma’s coming from the West?” answered, saying, “The oak tree in the front garden.” M # 37. What kind of knowing is that? Was he saying Bodhidharma was so compassionate he came even for the sake of this tree? If so, you’ve chopped down that old oak and turned into a dead stump.

Ongoing Zen practice-realization opens us to intimacy, a knowing beyond knowledge. If we persist, it does so with increasing depth. While this can make it seem like we are gaining, we’re actually losing – losing all that keeps us feeling separated, anxious, alone and without peace of mind. Such loss is a great gain. back and thinking, “ says we have peace from the start. All I have to do is realize it,” is not the same as making the effort to actually realize this inherent peace. All it means is that we have the assurance that if we do the work, gradually – which consists of many “suddenlys” – we will touch base with the vast peaceful ground that is our birthright. Though it may take time to see and take hold of it, we have the assurance of those who have walked this path before, that if we keep at it, one day we will see what is under our nose. Which is why we work with a teacher. It is actually surprisingly hard to see what is under our very nose. Wu-men has a verse that goes – “Because it is so very close, it takes so long to realize.” And, yet, such realization does happen. Bodhidharma and Huike demonstrate how this goes.

True peace begins with honesty, which typically means an actual recognition of our un- peace. Like the person who puts down his or her keys and a moment later reaches for them – only to discover that they’re not there, we may one day think, like Enyadatta, “Where is my peace? According to what I know from Zen teaching, it’s right here. Ok. So, where is it?!! I don't see it!”

This no peace is the beginning of real peace. Doubt is faith in action; faith is the ground of doubt. Which is not skepticism so much as, “Why? Why injustice? Why suffering? Why birth and death itself?” Roshi Kapleau used to say a Zen Buddhist really needs only one article of belief, namely that the Buddha wasn’t a fool or a liar when, upon his great enlightenment he exclaimed, “Wonder of wonders! All beings are already Buddha. Only self-centered delusions prevent their attesting to this.” Roshi Kapleau would add, once we accept that the Buddha wasn’t a fool or liar, we are driven to find out for ourselves what he was talking about. After all, “all beings” includes me. But how can I be a Buddha? I don’t see it at all. What did he mean?

Our path begins with sincerity and with a more than conceptual recognition of discomfort. “Why was I born? Why must I die? Why do painful and unjust things happen? Why is there so much suffering? Why are some rich and some poor, some healthy and some sick, some attractive and some ugly?” Huike, as a Buddhist monk, had read and studied, meditated, and chanted. And yet he was honest enough to acknowledge that his mind was not at peace. When he heard of this new teacher, Bodhidharma, he set off to find him.

What does it take to work with a teacher? How do we express our sincerity, our aspiration, our need and determination? How dramatic does it have to be? The story of Huike and Bodhidharma seems rather . . . excessive, wouldn't you say?

Letting go of what we no longer need, setting time aside for regular , for teisho, dokusan, , for ceremony, and is a way of cutting off an arm. It is not just a demonstration. It is the effort itself. Letting go of what is lesser, is how we work to realize what is greater. Committing to this count, this breath, this koan point, is our sitting in the snow. We no longer just drift along the way we’ve always done. We go against the flow of our own self-centered habits. Poet and men’s movement leader, Robert Bly’s words to a workshop I was in with him long ago, strike that chord – “If we just go with the flow,” he said, “we’ll always end up in the bleeping Gulf of Mexico.” In other words if we just keep doing what we’ve been doing, we’ll end up in the same old place we always end up – dissatisfied and without peace. There comes a time for effort and for change. Yet the problem with so-called “ Zen,” is that it thinks that macho toughness is the point of practice. If anything, it’s a side effect and not the point at all. Practicing sincerely opens us to intimacy with ourselves, with raindrops and falling leaves, with painful things and happy things with angry and joyous faces, with trees, crows, and cats.

When Rose and I were on China Pilgrimage in 2006 we went to Bodhidharma’s cave up on the mountainside, high above Shaolin temple. The cave was small and in it waited a nun from the nunnery partway up the mountain. She handed each of us a stick of incense to offer to the life-size image of Bodhidharma that sat there, swarthy and bearded with a golden earring in one ear, he lacked only a parrot on his shoulder and a cutlass in his hand to be the swashbuckling image of a pirate. And yet, inside that little cave where Bodhidharma is said to have sat in zazen for nine years in wall-gazing zazen, it felt very peaceful. It felt like Bodhidharma had not been fierce at all, was not a spiritual pirate but, rather, was so vastly empty he was at total peace with all that came his way. Which doesn’t mean everything was simply ok for him just as it was. He was not blasé. When Emperor Wu did not understand his Zen, the Zen not of learning and of being rewarded, but a Zen of awakening for the benefit of all, Bodhidharma didn’t waste time hanging around to explain his position and gain Imperial patronage. He packed up and left.

Here’s that central case showing the opening salvo – and failure – of Bodhidharma’s Zen. HR-# 1 BODHIDHARMA’S “I DON’T KNOW” asked the Great Master Bodidharma, “What is the first principle of the holy teachings?” Bodhidharma said, “Emptiness without holiness.” The Emperor said, “Who is standing before me?”

Bodhidharma replied, “I don’t know.”

The Emperor did not understand. Thereupon Bodhidharma crossed the Yangtse River and came to the kingdom of Wei.

Later the Emperor brought this up to the Prince Chih, who asked, “Does your Majesty know who this man is?” The Emperor said, “I don’t know.” Prince Chih said, “He is the Avalokiteshvara transmitting the Buddha Mind Seal.” The Emperor felt regretful and wanted to send an emissary to invite Bodhidharma to return. Prince Chih told him, “Your Majesty, it is no good sending a messenger to fetch him back. Even if everyone in the whole country were to go after him, he still would not return.”

Bodhidharma’s “I don't know,” echoes through the centuries. He is not puzzled, and it is not, a form of “Duh?” He wasn’t saying, “Gosh I’m not sure. I guess I better go and meditate to find out.” How is the Emperor’s sincere question, “What is the highest teaching of Buddhism?” resolved by, “vast emptiness, no holiness”? And how can there be no holiness if Bodhidharma himself is a holy man? Or is he? That’s what the Emperor asks in his follow up and it is a sincere question. “If there’s no holiness, then who are you?” Does Bodhidharma’s, “I don't know” express highest truth? How? If not, what is it about? What’s he saying?

Well, times have changed. These days no one needs to be as dedicated as Huike to realize that having peace of mind might be a very good thing. Global pandemic, economic instability, corrupt leaders, nuclear weapons, biological catastrophe, climate change, environmental destruction, wars, terrorism, famines, typhoons, earthquakes and hurricanes make real peace of mind – not just closing our eyes and minds to the threats – a very precious thing, indeed. Anxiety is us! Our ordinary human intelligence, our awareness of death, our sense of an ending itself, leads us directly into the Buddha’s first Noble Truth: life is filled with anguish. The Buddha didn't invent this; he merely showed the fact. He wasn’t building a case for pessimism. Because we are conscious of ourselves as isolated individuals here for only a short time, we feel isolated and anxious and naturally seek ways to evade or forestall the inevitable. Power, possessions, and experiences can temporarily help us to feel like we might be ok. But then the awareness of the of sickness, old age, and death keeps returning and our temporary havens get demolished. Again. And, again. In time, the big bad wolf comes to every door and blows the house down. Except for that house of brick. “How do I build such a house?” we may begin to think. “Even brick begins as mud. So what is the secret of that sturdy house? Why can’t it get blown down? Is it simply so tough – or what?”

The Buddha started out in a sturdy palace as a wealthy and sheltered prince. Then he saw clearly and all at once, while still just a young man, that that sturdy house of his could not stand. In the great wind blowing on all beings it, too, would be demolished. In time, we all see it, too. Which is why Joseph Campbell wrote in his seminal work, The Hero with a Thousand Faces that the story of the Buddha’s home leaving is the clearest version anywhere, of the essential hero myth. It is our own story, every one of us.

Bodhidharma radically changed . It was no longer about additive study. It was no longer about amassing learning, or building a palace of “.” All was stripped away until only Mind right now, just as it is, is personally realized. However, Bodhidharma was not actually a radical at all, except to worldly interpretations of Dharma. He was presenting the Buddha’s own profound realization – “Wonder of wonders! All Beings are intrinsically Buddha, fully endowed with all wisdom and virtue. Only their self-preoccupied delusions prevent them from attesting to it.” Bodhidharma’s Zen makes this practical and clear. He moved Buddhism from philosophy to actual practice-realization. His central point remains intact today: we don’t need to add a thing. If we just remove our delusions liberating Truth is right here! Easier, much easier, said than done. The core delusion of duality, “me in here, and everyone and everything else out there,” forms the lynch-pin everyone’s personal solar system, turning on the unconscious belief that we are the sun and all others, like so many planets, revolve around us. Only, it ain’t really so. And because it isn't, our little solar system, no matter how we work at refining it, never quite spins true, but remains constantly subject to all kinds of groaning and grinding difficulties. The Buddhist term for suffering, “dukkha,” literally describes the groaning and grinding of a wheel not spinning true on its axle. That groaning grinding sound you hear is our lack of peace. And no matter how well we grease the axle the problem never does get quite resolved. Why? How will we find real peace?

To help us find real peace, Bodhidharma compassionately demands that we go to the root and step into our actual lives without clinging to texts, without reliance on thoughts, without lugging around phrases to make us feel calm or wise. The transmission outside scriptures, not relying on words or letters tells us that, just as we are, we can awake to our own at peace Buddha nature, true nature. This is not anti-intellectualism. Books can remind us and give us pointers. Neither Bodhidharma nor Huike were unlearned and Zen does not seek to make us spontaneous fools. Learning has a deep and valid place. But it is no substitute for personal knowledge, knowledge of this breath, this morning star, this falling snow, this bitterly cold night on the mountainside. The koan of Bodhidharma and his heir, Huike, plunges us into the heart of it. We are not at peace. How can we attain peace? What do we have to do? Bodhidharma, sensing our sincerity, turns around from his nine years of facing the wall, and in order to help us, opens up like a clam showing his guts.

For after Huike had gone through the painful drama of standing or sitting all night in snow and bitter cold, the master finally relents and asks, “What do you want?” Huike responds, “That the master open the gate of compassion and help me attain peace of mind.”

Bodhidharma answers, “How can you, with your shallow mind and weak will, your lack of dedication and determination hope to attain the lofty way of the Buddhas and Ancestors?”

Huike takes out a sword or dagger and cuts off his arm to prove his determination. Bodhidharma then accepts him as is a person of the Way and offers teaching. Only it is not what Huike or anyone in China at that time thought it might be. It is not reassurance: “Relax son. You have Buddha-nature. Just work hard and you, too will awaken to it.” It is not learning. “Study this text and you will have peace of mind.” It is not a secret text or whispered words of wisdom. Rather, Bodhidharma acts with the bold talent and skill of a master thief and skillfully steals Huike’s distress away. Which is transformative.

In case no. 96 of the Hekigan Roku (), “Chao-chou’s Three Turning Words,” Yuan wu, drawing on the Transmission of the Lamp text from a hundred or so years earlier, in his commentary on the case imagines back to that moment six hundred or so years further back, when Huike sat in the snow outside Bodhidharma’s cave. Yuan wu imagines him thinking, “In the past people who sought the Way put their hair in the mud for a Buddha to walk on, broke their bones and removed the marrow to gain a verse of wisdom, leapt from cliffs to feed tigers. What about me?”

Here lies the nub of it: what about me? It comes down not to theory but to what is intimate and personal. By the way, these are all jataka references; things the Buddha himself is said to have done in earlier lives in the course of his own desperate search for peace and truth. Yuan wu has Huike turn to jatakas to motivate his own great effort. I’ve heard a contemporary teacher has said that while jatakas of classical Buddhism are inspirational and useful, they are not Zen. I beg to differ. And keep in mind – the Buddha wasn’t always the smiling peaceful fellow sitting on the altar. That’s the finished product. But it took lots of work to get there, and his own honest recognition of un-peace is what kept him moving forward.

Plus, there is a fundamental root of anguish for us all. If we have all this potential for wisdom, compassion and virtue, that is integrity, (the virtue of iron is strength, and so on), what happens when that vast potential remains unused, when it festers away, is frittered away and while the while the clock is running out, and we still have not accessed or actualized our own great potential. Isn’t that in itself a perfect recipe for anguish? Isn’t that something we all must face up to and deal with?

Well, Bodhidharma relents further and says, “Bring me your troubled mind and I’ll give it peace.” Surely Huike thinks, “At last! Now all I have to do is present my mind, which even now gives me no peace, and the great Master will bring it Peace. I’ve come to the right place, indeed!”

Good luck. No teacher, not the Buddha, not Bodhidharma can give us our own nature, or our own peace. But a teacher can help us see it, find it, live it for ourselves if we are willing to make the effort. To do this, rather than giving us additional spiritual goodies, Zen teachers help us see through and strip away the things we cling to and identify with, (thereby selling our own real nature short). This can be uncomfortable. And yet – how liberating! Blake wrote – “More more is the cry of a mistaken . Less than All cannot satisfy!” (“There is No Natural ”.) Zen simply says, “Swallow the entire river in one gulp!” Which is actually the core of our daily zazen, which we tend to realize in little sips, not suppressing, not pushing away but letting all we’ve identified with momentarily go, persisting to the living flowing source, uncovering the Original unconditioned Face that was our own before our parents were even born.

Huike was middle-aged, and had practiced the kind of Buddhism that was available at the time. He’d examined texts, sat in , given up attachments. But his mind was not at peace. He had not touched ground. Being honest, he knew it. His determination for gaining the Way and finding peace as the core of his life makes him the archetype for all Zen aspirants. The path of realization is not simply a stroll in sunshine. Of course, there are wonderfully and joyously fulfilling moments! But, like Huike, we, too, must endure our own version of dark nights, loneliness, and bitter cold. “Sitting long and getting tired,” is how one old master put it.

Huike’s sitting and searching for his Mind may have taken minutes, hours, days, weeks, or months The koan doesn't tell us. For most of us it takes years. The koan allows for all of it. But even years eventually resolve into final moments and, then, into the moment. Still Aitken Roshi adds these reminders, “Not enough yet, not yet enough.” And, “Even Shakyamuni is only half-way there.” Kapleau Roshi liked the old saying, “The ancient teachings illumine the mind, and the mind illumines the ancient teachings.” This is an endless process.

But here’s a tip: Bodhidharma doesn’t know, either. There is no wisdom he clings to, no dogma he lugs around, no distance from what is because no self-centeredness. No concept of body or mind. No understanding or knowing, no stupidity or dullness, nothing he can give Huike or you or me. Right here he completely puts the troubled mind to rest and opens the gateless gate. Nothing is hidden. “Not-knowing” as koan no. 20 in the Shoyoroku or Book of Serenity puts it, “is most intimate.” In that case Hogen was about to go on pilgrimage. Jizo said to him, “What do you expect to gain by pilgrimage?” Hogen said, “I don't know.” Jizo said, “Not-knowing is most intimate.” It was a deeply transformative moment. The teaching of Bodhidharma springs forward once more and, “There! I’ve put it to rest for you!”

What is intimacy? What is the point of practice? Is Bodhidharma saying anguish is the answer? But, how could that be it? And how could Huike’s failure, his inability to find the mind bring with it any kind of relief and peace? Search to the bottom and what is there? Do you see Bodhidharma’s brilliant functioning?

Wu-men’s Commentary The broken-toothed old foreigner proudly came over a hundred thousand miles across the sea. This was like raising waves where there is no wind. Bodhidharma could enlighten only one disciple, and even he was a cripple. Well, well! Hsien-san-lang does not know four words.

The language is not devotional but ironic, cutting away our attachment to even these lofty beings. Wu-men calls Bodhidharma “broken-toothed” because Buddhist teachers in China at the time, afraid he would steal their students and their fame, tried to poison him, leaving his teeth chipped from their venomous potions. Raising waves where there’s no wind is Wu-men’s version of, “Why did he bother to make such a tumult over nothing?” Or, “Why does he gouge wounds in healthy flesh?” We must see his irony here, see with the same eyes, hear with the same ears, only then will we get it. Huike is – again, this is ironic, “a cripple” because he had only one arm and also because he couldn’t even find his own mind! What a loser!! (By the way, despite the legend that grew up over time that he cut it off to prove his sincerity, the reality is that it may that have been chopped off in an encounter with bandits.) Hsien-san-lang, a fisherman in Chinese folklore, was completely illiterate. He knew nothing, as it were, yet he still caught plenty of fish. Again – attachment to words and letters may not resolve our life doubts or our religious quest. But illiteracy is not the point.

Such language is part of Zen’s mystique, designed to free us from attachment to even grandiose figures as these founding teachers – if they projected outside ourselves – as well as to free us our own accumulated and encrusted attachment to our store of learning. (Remember please, Zen and certainly most teachers were cultured and learned.) Zen won’t let us settle down with some version of, “Oh, how great they were.” No. Instead, we ourselves must set out on the road and accomplish what they did. Why? Because it is who we are. As our jukai – receiving the precepts ceremony says – “The Buddhas and of the past were like us, and we will in the future become Buddhas and Bodhisattvas.” The Japanese haiku poet, Basho wrote, “I don't seek to imitate the men of the past. I seek what they sought.”

Unfortunately this kind of Zen language can be misunderstood to mean that Zen is harsh and requires shouts and blows. Some teachers – especially long ago – did use harsh methods. But most disciplines back then were taught through physically and mentally demanding apprenticeships. Yet even way back then, some truly great teachers like Chao- chou and others were not harsh at all, but quiet and subtle. Aitken Rosh today was such a teacher. Still, an attitude of rigor appears in all functioning spiritual traditions – in the lives, for example, of the Desert Fathers of Christianity, as well as in the lives of the Hasidic masters of 18th and nineteenth Century Poland. Aitken Roshi was not harsh, but he was, nonetheless, extremely exacting and unflinchingly precise as regards koan points when in the dokusan room, as well as regards ethical behaviors in life.

The archetype of rigor is accurate. Enduring bitter cold and snow, enduring “you don't have what it takes,” enduring cutting off an arm are expressions of truth. While there is flow, we don’t simply float into practice. While there is joy, there are times of challenge, commitment, effort and decision. It need not be harsh. But it is serious. It need not be grim but does require honesty and sincerity.

As ordinary people today, the Buddha’s and Huike’s and Bodhidharma’s renunciations still guide us. For us, giving up out-worn views, values, habits, activities, letting go of what is lesser for the greater is our expression of the ancient Way. While we don’t repeat Huike’s renunciation literally, it remains a guiding archetype. While Zen practice might be challenging and, at times, quite inconvenient, it is transformative. Working sincerely to accomplish anything meaningful already begins to change us.

We each have to find a way to embody what we experience. It need not be a big deal. If we accept our aspiration towards enlightenment, our desire, not just for peace as personal calm, but peace as an ability to live creatively, in harmony with all beings, and of aid to all, it will guide us creating opportunities for growth. We acknowledge and accept this responsibility in small and personal ways. Self-centeredness and the violence and unrest it gives rise to can end. Each day is an opportunity to realize the Path more deeply and recognize anew what Bodhidharma meant when he said, “I have put it to rest for you.”

An old Zen teacher wrote: The snow of Shorin is stained crimson Let us dye our heart with it. Humble though it may be. (from Shibayama)

When Huike was himself a teacher and spiritually mature, he wandered through the fish- seer’s stalls, -shops and wine-shops hanging out, too, with lowlifes on the street corners. He was upbraided for this by establishment-types. “Why do you, a man of learning, refinement and wisdom do this? Huike answered, “I do it for the sake of my own soul.” Or, “I do it to deepen and mature my own practice realization.” It was his Way.

Huike was eventually was killed by the local governor for preaching this new radical Zen Buddhism, a teaching not dependent on book learning or good-deed doing but invested in personal realization of the ancient Way. Legend says that his body, after floating upstream came to rest at what came to be known as that 2nd Ancestors Village. The entire community there, even today still knows and is dedicated to the story and teaching of Huike and Bodhidharma. Visiting there, back in 2006, was like walking into an old tale come to life.

Wumen’s verse: Coming from the West and directly pointing— This great affair was caused by the transmission. The troublemakers who created the stir in Zen circles Are, after all, these two!

Bows and bows again to these two old troublemakers. (I think of John Lewis who said, “We should never be too afraid to cause good trouble.” In their own time, Bodhidharma and Huike were of that mind). The Buddha Way, Zen tells us is not far off, and is not reserved for special people. It is ours by birthright. At some point, we all recognize the many difficulties of this life and are anguished by it. That is our start. At this point, having encountered the first Noble Truth of and its anguish, some try to hide from the pain of their own recognition. Probably we all do – for a while. There are endless byways open to us, built on varying degrees of dedication to power, fame, wealth, possessions, and experiences. Again – none of these are intrinsically bad. But, if we settle with them as the focus of our life, we are the losers. Because all we need do to achieve real peace is simply, as Bodhidharma insists, bring forth our own troubled mind so it can be pacified.

That shouldn’t be too hard to do now, should it?